Tom Stoppard's Secret-And Mine

"In 2023, I went to New York to see Tom Stoppard's play Leopoldstadt, about a Jewish family in Vienna before World War II. It was the final work Stoppard produced before his death late last year, at the age of 88, and the most personal play of his career. By the time the story ends, in the 1950s, only three members of the family are still alive, including Leo, who escaped to Britain as a child refugee and has no knowledge of his Jewish heritage."

"I bought tickets to Leopoldstadt because Stoppard was a giant of the theater, but I was also hoping to recover some of my own family history. I, too, have Jewish roots that were kept hidden from me for much of my life. That day in the theater, I caught a glimpse of what it must have been like in my mother's family's living room in Berlin before they were forced to flee Germany."

The play follows a Jewish family in Vienna across generations, ending in the 1950s with only three surviving members, including Leo, a child refugee who escapes to Britain and remains unaware of his Jewish heritage. Tom Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler in 1937; his family fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and settled in London, and he learned in his 50s that he was Jewish and that his grandparents were murdered in the Holocaust. The narrator sought personal family history in seeing the play, discovering shared hidden Jewish roots. The narrator's mother hid her Jewish identity, relinquished custody after a divorce, and promised never to reveal their ancestry.

Read at The Atlantic